Linux command to wait for a SSH server to be up

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I don’t have a host that I can ssh to and control whether it’s up or not, but this should work:

while ! ssh <ip>
do
    echo "Trying again..."
done

Or a shell script that is more explicit:

#!/bin/sh

ssh $1
while test $? -gt 0
do
   sleep 5 # highly recommended - if it's in your local network, it can try an awful lot pretty quick...
   echo "Trying again..."
   ssh $1
done

Save it as (say) waitforssh.sh and then call it with sh waitforssh.sh 192.168.2.38

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